Cercle Odyssey vs. Sphere: Making Concerts More Immersive

The Cercle Odyssey is a brand-new touring immersive concert experience, with its first concerts scheduled for 2025. Immediately after learning about it, I started comparing it to The Sphere in Las Vegas, another immersive video and concert experience I had an opportunity to see in person earlier this year.

Cercle says that audiences attending Cercle Odyssey shows will be surrounded by 360 degrees of high-definition video that will be synchronized with the music being played and displayed on video walls about 40 feet tall and 180 feet long.

Cercle says every Cercle Odyssey show will be unique, with artists performing in the center and the surrounding videos acting like “a panoramic window onto our planet.” The Sphere similarly kicked off its grand opening with a concert series and a video celebration of our planet: Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard from Earth.

While the Sphere’s immense interior wraparound video wall is made of LEDs, the Cercle Odyssey will be powered by 29 projectors, which Cercle has said will be rented locally along with the sound and lighting equipment, cutting down on the cost (in both money and energy) of transporting such equipment over the long distances required for a tour. The Sphere, on the other hand, being a giant fixed glowing LED orb, is not going on tour anytime soon. However, like Cercle, it also has aspirations to reach new audiences. The Sphere aims to achieve this by building new Sphere locations in various cities around the world. 

The Cercle Odyssey will have a no-phones policy, but each show will be filmed professionally, and attendees will have access to those materials. At the Sphere, at least when I visited, no one seemed to care if I pulled out my device, because there’s no way a mere phone could do justice to the experience. It’ll only ever capture a small portion of the screen. 

Speaking of phones, a lot of marketing these days relies on creating viral moments people share on social media. The Sphere is extremely well-designed for that sort of thing, given the fact it’s surrounded by the world’s largest LED screen, which not only can create photo-friendly memeable moments, it also acts like its own billboard, drawing people to the landmark venue like moths to a flame. 

Cercle is a company best known for producing concerts in photogenic locations around the world, and filming and broadcasting them on the internet. This new Cercle Odyssey venture is a way to bring immersion to audiences through the concert experience. The Sphere also is pushing immersive experiences to new levels: inventing the Big Sky camera to capture Spherical video, dealing with the complex engineering challenges that come with designing a first-of-its-kind Spherical entertainment venue, and arguably creating an entirely new media format. 

This push toward group immersive experiences comes on the heels of a significant investment in building out the so-called metaverse, where individual immersive experiences are achieved through glasses, goggles and headgear. The Cercle Odyssey and The Sphere both appear to be aiming at providing a group setting for immersive experiences. These experiences may eventually be reformatted for VR release, the way that films start off with a theatrical release and then become available later for home viewing on streaming services. 

The Cercle Odyssey tour is kicking off next year in Mexico City, Los Angeles and Paris. Phase 1 tickets are sold out, but there is a wait list you can join to find out about new ticket sales and new tour dates. To see the Cercle Odyssey and The Sphere in action, check out the video in this article.